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The Watering Hole; Friday May 29 2015; Constitutional IQ’s

It seems obvious to me that what I choose to call Constitutional IQ is a yardstick of sorts, one which measures a candidate’s (or elected official’s) appreciation of constitutional details when putting forth a proposition for action. For my purposes here, I assume that those who comprehend and appreciate constitutional premises fall into the positive range where the pinnacle is, say, +100. Similarly, those who willingly (or unknowingly) disavow constitutional guarantees fall into the negative range where -100 is as low as anyone can ever attain.

With that in mind, we can begin by citing the basic premises of the American Constitution’s intent, premises which are briefly noted in its Preamble as follows:

We the people of the United States, in order to

form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,

do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Notice that the general term “people” is not broken down into categories; there is no mention of origin, or whether immigrant or native born. Nor is there any mention of gender, race, ethnicity, or even of sexual preference. There is no mention of religion and certainly no mandate, nor is there recognition of any preference of belief, and no penalty for non-belief. My best guess is that each and all ‘non-mentioned’ concepts and realities were deemed by the founders to fall under the blessings of liberty umbrella.

There is also no mandate anywhere in the entire document (as amended) that ‘hate and fear’ be deemed drivers of American constitutionalism, although today if one listens to the current crop of Republican 2016 presidential candidates, one might assume that their collective vision of the Constitution requires that each and all of its premises are most assuredly driven by same.

For example: Republican candidate Rick Santorum invariably finds fault in so many of the nondescript blessings of liberty that it becomes difficult to fairly judge his constitutional IQ. Here, for example are ten of his most bizarre theses which, when coupled with his 5 Worst Smears — Attacking Gay Rights, Working Women & Church-State Separation amply demonstrate his constitutional illiteracy. And since all of the above amount to just a surface scratch on his political agenda, it’s a mark of utmost courtesy on my part to assign him a constitutional IQ somewhere in the range of -50.

And then there’s presidential candidate Rand Paul whose recent remarkthat the issue of abortion rights would be best handled “by the states” rather than “under the 14th Amendment” and his ambiguous answer to the question of “when does life begin” were, as commentators on the left and the right have pointed out, somewhat confounding since Paul hassponsored a Senate billthat aims to undermine Roe v. Wade by defining life as beginning “at conception.”Tossing aside the fourteenth amendment in favor of a panoply of religious arguments doesn’t sound like something a genuine constitutional advocate would ever even contemplate. On the other hand, he does recognize the privacy premises of the fourth amendment, so I’m guessing Rand Paul’s constitutional IQ to fall somewhere in the vicinity of -10.

Meanwhile, Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s contribution to the 2016 Republican clown car is engaged in his current task of doing whatever he deems necessary to convince the religious right that he’s one of them. In one of his recent gigs, he attempted to convince anti-choice leader that he really Didn’t Mean What He Said About Abortion Being Between ‘A Woman And Her Doctor’. And according to the head of the Susan B. Anthony list, Walker said that“using the language of the other side to support our own position is a good thing, but you can only do it if people aren’t trying to call you out and quoting you out of context.” Right. Use any excuse possible to convince the far right religious movers and shakers that the blessings of liberty do not apply to those who violate a religious opinion while undergoing procedures that are constitutionally acceptable and protected. Clever, Scott, very clever. For that I assess your constitutional IQ at -104!

OK, that’s about all I can handle today. And gee, I haven’t touched on Ted Cruz, or Lindsey Graham, or Carly Fiorina, or any of the rest of the current and projected stars in 2016’s Theater of the Absurd. I do suspect, however, that the three listed above have viably demonstrated their sub-basement constitutional IQ’s. I also assume the rest of the field to be extremely competent at doing the same. I cannot, in fact, recall a single instance where any one of the 2016 clown car candidates has ever spoken in support of a more perfect union, or unencumbered justice, or domestic tranquility, or an unencumbered common defense, and definitely not any level whatsoever of general welfare. They are all, however, definitely supporters of the blessings of liberty — for corporate entities and for the ultra-wealthy 1% who enthusiastically fund their bogus loyalties and will apparently stand any unconstitutional ground imaginable — for the right payoff.

Santorum vowed to oppose “all forms of pornography” if elected president. In fact, pornography was the top issue on his campaign’s website. He warned that “America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography,” which “causes profound brain changes in both children and adults, resulting in widespread negative consequences.”

What would these negative consequences be?
Fewer wars?
Less crime?
More bouncy boobies at the beach and at the supermarket?

Yeah, and amen. I’ve always wondered what’s so wrong about it. I mean, Adam and Eve were always naked in the Garden, no problem. Then Eve ate an apple and all of a sudden they were both ashamed and each found a bunch of fig leaves to cover up what they didn’t want the other to see, and suddenly the world was awash with sin. Seems to me that if we went back to early garden days — a world with no fig leaves, no clothes, and no apples — there’d be no more sin, prolly.

Maybe Sick Rantorum is descended from that snake. Or maybe the apple? Evolution works in strange ways, a thesis confirmed by taking a quick peek at the Republican clown car occupants.😯

In my mind, it’s like meth or 19 kids and counting or Honey Boo Boo.
No one is forcing you to do it so don’t watch it.
Unless, of course, there’s a double standard in place…
No that could never happen with santorum.
One of the very few politicians to have his name in the urban dictionary

“No, it hasn’t changed my mind. We all have the same evidence, and it’s just a matter of how you interpret it,”

There is no way to reason with these people, they are stupid …. and the irony of our time is that without the complex society that rational thought has produced that can easily prove that this man is stupid, is also keeping him from returning to the dust from which he came – that’s all

When the only REALITY that exists in a given person’s mind is defined by that well-known “antique volume written by faded men,” then a new rule is automatically in effect. No longer do individual fragments of evidence merge to define reality. Instead, the PERCEIVED reality is used to redefine each and all fragments of evidence so that they fit said perceived reality. Inverted science, in a word. It makes a 60 million year-old fossil a 6000 year-old fossil simply because nothing anywhere is more than 6000 years old. It says so in the Good Book.

Indicted former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was paying an individual from his past to conceal sexual misconduct, two federal law enforcement officials said Friday.

One of the officials, who would not speak publicly about the federal charges in Chicago, said “Individual A,” as the person is described in Thursday’s federal indictment, was a man and that the alleged misconduct was unrelated to Hastert’s tenure in Congress. The actions date to Hastert’s time as a Yorkville, Ill., high school wrestling coach and teacher, the official said.

In a radio commentary earlier this month, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly acknowledged that it’s “quite true that America was built by hard-working people from all over the world,” but cautioned that today’s immigrants from Latin America are “not the same sort” as the wave of mostly European immigrants who came to the U.S. in the early 20th century.

Schlafly criticized President Obama for calling the U.S. “a nation of immigrants,” saying, “The problem is that the immigrants coming into our country today are not the same sort as the immigrants who contributed so much to building our great country. The immigrants who came to America in the 1920s and ‘30s were different – with very different motives.”

“It’s quite true that America was built by hard working people from all over the world who sought a place of freedom where they could realize their dream,” she said. “But today’s immigrants don’t have the same motivation, the same love for America, the same desire to be part of the American culture and dream.”

She cited Russian-born songwriter Irving Berlin as the kind of America-loving immigrant who supposedly no longer come to the United States.

And European immigrants mostly had white skin. That’s what Amurkkka is, the way god made it.

I have a theory that the increase of immigration across our southern border is another symptom of climate change. If we don’t do anything to reduce the amount of carbon we put in the atmosphere Canada will have a problem with Americans moving north seeking relief from the heat!

And if that scenario plays out I wonder what Canada would do with the people they catch trying to bring guns across the border?

I don’t think it’s bad proofreading. The net is abuzz with reports of many other sources, including FAUX”News” affiliates, running the unedited “mistake” and the story has still not been corrected 21 hours after being posted. I wasn’t really joking yesterday when I said that Diddling Denny will be called “another example of Clinton era corruption”. Mistakes of this kind are not a failing of our corporate media. It’s their business plan.

When Denny Hastert appeared on a C-SPAN call-in show, a caller named Bruce, who said, “Hello Denny… Remember me from Yorkville?” before laughing and hanging up, appeared to be one more unscreened C-SPAN loon. Today, however…

Riiiight. Like the 97% of climate scientists who agree that the science, namely that human emissions are causing climate change, is settled. Is it wrong for me to wish that the frothy one would be sucked up by a freak tornado and deposited in the middle of the Atlantic?